DRONES FOR KIDS

We give you the lowdown on our top 11 drones for kids as well as answering your kids drone related questions

Best Drones for Kids 2019

Are you thinking of buying a drone for you child? Whilst it is a great idea and we fully support kids flying drones (in a safe, supervised and responsible manner of course) there are a few questions that always arise when it comes to drones and children. Below this round up of drones for kids you will find some FAQ’s on the topic of allowing children to use drones.

Drones for Kids 2019

It is probably not surprising to hear that at Drone Deliver we love drones. We also firmly believe that drones should not strictly be for adults and that it is often as children that our future passions are ignited – so take a look at these top ten drones for kids and do them a favour and ignite their passion for a brilliant hobby – and who knows maybe even a career.

1 – Holy Stone Predator Quadcopter – Our Winner

Depending on what you think your child is going to want in their drone, this is either going to be a very clear winner or something that can’t even be considered. That is because the Holy Stone Predator doesn’t have a camera built in – now whilst most of the drones on this list don’t have a camera, if it is a must for your child then you might want to opt for one of our other kids’ drones – if not – read on as this is an absolute beast of a drone and kids will love it!

The first thing to point out is that this drone will not break the bank and the very fact that it doesn’t have a camera included means that there is more beef under the hood in terms of flying power and other cool techyness.

The Holy Stone Predator has a 6 axis gyroscope stabilisation system which makes it super stable in the air – even in slightly gusty situations and it is therefore suitable for indoor and outdoor use.

It has a range of flips and tricks that it can perform at the touch of a button and it has one of the coolest controllers of all the drones on this list. In fact, the controller is so good it can be used by kids and adults alike and will have a very familiar feel to it as soon as you hold it.

You will get around 7-8 minutes of flying time from each charge and with each charge just taking half an hour or so it means you can be back up in the air in no time – something that kids will certainly appreciate. You can also order extra batteries and propellers with a full bundle of extra batteries and propellers plus the drone itself costing less than £60!

What makes this drone a standout winner of this list on top of the killer looks and ease of use is the 3 flying speeds that you can choose from. This makes learning much easier as you can select lower speeds for training. A control range of up to 50m is ample to get plenty of experience and you might want to grab a couple of these and pit your wits against each other.

2 – Best Super Low Budget Drone For Kids – JJRC H36 Mini Drone

It has come to our attention that our number three drone for kids is currently not available so we wanted to throw in an alternative. With Christmas looming you might not want to wait for the UDI UFO to become available so we have a cheaper alternative for you to consider.

In fact, this drone is so cheap you could class it as a stocking filler – it is also small enough to fit in those Christmas stockings!

The JJRC H36 has always been an entry level quadcopter that we have been a fan of. In fact, the main negative of this drone might just be a positive when it comes to being suitable for children. The controller is pretty small, and this is the only real bad thing about this drone – but with children generally having much smaller hands and fingers than adults, this shouldn’t really be an issue.

If you are looking for a drone that is less than £20, still has a decent flight and will give you hours of fun (in 5 minute bursts) then you can’t go wrong with the JJRC mini drone. With a charge time of just 30 minutes you can be up in the sky in no time and the kids (and the adults) will love it.

If budget is your main concern, or you are worried about the kids breaking the drone then the JJRC H36 is a great substitute for our number three pick.

3 – DJI/Ryze Tello – Best Camera Drone For Kids

The Tello was released early on in 2018 and has since impressed us in so many different ways. In a way that the DJI Spark was aimed at teens and those of the selfie generation, the Tello was aimed at the same market (and perhaps a slightly younger market) with the cheaper Tello. DJI partnered up with Chinese startup company Ryze Robotics to develop what in all honesty looks like a younger sibling of the Spark.

Packing a 720p HD camera under the hood that is capable of taking of taking stills in crystal clear 13MP of clarity, the Tello has plenty of promise and has delivered consistently on many levels.

The Tello has one clear benefit over any other drone for kids and that is that it is programmable – in other words you can encourage your child to learn to code with the Tello. Using Scratch coding, DJI have been quick to highlight this significant facet of this drone and it has even been used in schools and colleges to introduce students to code.

Aside from the educational benefits, the Tello has fun in abundance. The intuitive mobile app will feel familiar and easy to use right from the off and with optical sensors to aid with take off and landing, FPV video being streamed direct to your handset over a WiFi connection and a plethora of tricks and stunts that can be performed with the swipe of a finger – it is clear to see why the Tello is so sought after.

It will cost a little more than most of the drones featured on this page at around £95 but with a 13 minute battery life and super fast USB charging, the Tello has a little more to offer than most shown here.

PROS:

For the price the camera is excellent

Best battery life by far

Looks great

Easy to use app

Ability to code adds educational benefit

Two different flight speeds – great for beginners and experienced pilots alike

CONS:

A little expensive as a toy (but the Tello is much more than just a toy)

This is without a doubt one of our favourite drones for children (and we have to admit we quite enjoyed it ourselves) and the features and usability of the UDI U845 UFO drone made it a firm winner for us. First up, the UFO design of this Quadcopter is really cool – it made us feel like we were in a sci-fi so children would get a lot of pleasure before they even take to the skies with this model.

What the UDI U845 has in looks doesn’t mean it skimps in other areas as it uses some of the best entry level drone tech we have seen. The onboard camera records video in HD at 1280 x 720p and records at 30 MBPS and like the LiDi there is an app that allows you to control the drone and watch the video footage live as you record – more on that in a minute.

The battery lasted us around 8 minutes when filming but the this futuristic looking UFO comes complete with a backup battery so you should be able to enjoy well over 15 minutes of flying time between the two. There is a nifty low voltage audible alarm that will alert you if your drone is lower on power so you can safely land your craft.

The drone is suitable for indoor use as well as outdoor use and has a nifty LED light that looks really good in low level lighting conditions.

Check Latest Price of the UFO hereBack to the app – this is where the UDI U845 UFO really excels. The drone itself is quite difficult to fly, even for a more advanced drone pilot but the app (which is available on iOS and Android) not only allows you to view your video at a range of 30m or less, it also allows you to change the way you control the drone. The Gravity Induction Mode allows you to control the drone in a way that is relative to the angle of our mobile phone, so you can control it based upon what you can see on the screen. The picture quality is excellent and apart from a small amount of lag we experienced at first (we closed all our other apps and then had no issues), the experience was flawless.

As previously stated, the drone is not the easiest to fly but with different modes of control it can be made easier. The ‘Headless Mode’ allows you to control the drone easier by having forward, backward, left and right controls that stay constant rather than changing in relation to the direction the drone is facing. This is quite a good feature given the circular design of the drone.

Overall, this drone had to make our top ten and it was a favourite of our young tester. Almost a winner!

PROS:

Less than £60 represents real value for this

The UDIRC Drone App was the best we tested at this price point

The best looking drone we tested

Extra battery gave us good flight times

Video quality was high def – a real plus

Different flight modes and especially the headless mode make operation a little easier

CONS:

Difficult to manoeuvre, especially for beginners

Overall – 9/10

5 – Gool RC 515V Hovering Drone

Making it in at number four on our list of top kids’ quadcopters is the GoolRC 515V drone. This is one of the best looking drones on our list and the boys will love it as soon as they see it.

It has some of the functionality of the U818A but at half the price and it is actually easier to fly thanks to some nifty features it has. The two speed settings help beginners who will benefit from a slower flight speed and the one touch take off and landing makes the trickier parts of the flight very easy indeed.

360 flips are easy to perform and whilst the controller doesn’t look as cool as the U818A it does have some good features – not least the altitude hold feature which helps you keep your UAV steady.

It has headless mode too which helps beginners control their drone more easily and this version also had a built in camera and shops with a 4GB memory card to store images and video. The quality of the camera is not that impressive at just 0.3MP but it does give a good first experience of drone photography.

What really propelled this drone in to a top 4 spot on our list was how well protected it is. The propellers are almost caged in which means you will do very well to break them. This drone is almost indestructible and if the worst does happen there are plenty of spare parts available.

Spare batteries are easily bought and don’t cost the earth unlike some brands we could mention.

PROS:

One of the meanest in terms of looks

Has a built in camera

Relatively inexpensive

Very robust and hard to break

Lots of features including altitude hold and one touch take off/landing

6 – U818A FPV Drone

One of our all time favourite budget drones is the U818A FPV drone. This drone made it to number one on our top drones under £100 list but the reason we have not bumped it up higher on this list is due to its price and the fact that it is not quite as easy to use as some of the other drones on this list. The U818A is also quite highly spec’d so your child might not need all the functionality it has.

Whether you opt for this drone will probably come down to the age of the child you are buying for. If it is for an 8 year old then we’d say go for something out of our top 3. If it is for someone who is 14+ then this could be perfect – as long as your budget can stretch to around £80 – just know that for that, you get an awful lot of tech for your money.

The U818A is an FPV drone, which means it has a front facing camera that allows you to stream footage live to your mobile device (which you attach to the controller) and grants you 720p HD footage of your flight.

This drone is perfect for racing and stunts with all the 3D flips and tricks available at the touch of a button. The controller very much resembles a games console controller so again, the older kids will find it very familiar.

This package comes with a second battery which will double your flying time around 14-18 minutes.

To get the most out of this drone you will need a mobile phone as this is how the footage is streamed – but the UDIRC FPV app is excellent so if your child has a smartphone they can be up and flying with it in no time.

This is top notch for the older kids and adults will love it too – trust us.

7 – Cheerson CX10

The Cheerson CX10 is aptly named as it is cheap and cheerful. That being said it packs enough of a punch for it to make our top ten and at the price of a few pints it is more of a stocking filler than the main event – but will have all the glory of the latter.

Smaller than a mobile phone, this drone might be small but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, our child tester absolutely loved this mini-quadcopter and wanted to take it home.

The controller is very basic but for the money you literally could not complain. You can still do flips and rolls and it copes with these with ease.

There is even a very cool set of LED lights that make it look very cool in the dark – the kids will love it.

If you want a starter drone with some challenge in terms of flying then this is the perfect gift.

Not the cheapest drone we have tested for this buying guide but the RC Quadcopter is a very good training and learning drone indeed. It is the only drone in our top 5 that has 4 different sensitivity settings allowing for greater control with greater experience. You get all the standard 360 flips and rolls that you would expect and it also comes with a good quality HD camera built in.

The 2MP 1280 x 720p camera is a decent (although not the best we tested) camera and provides a reasonable output for a drone in this price bracket and you will need to use an SD card to store your footage – this does however mean that you can record as much as the external storage you have allows. It comes with 4GB as standard.

The distance of operation is again around 30 metres which is pretty standard for this entry level drone and there is plenty of fun to be had with the quality remote control handset with LCD display.

Unfortunately, there is no mobile app to view your footage from so again you will be shooting blind which is somewhat disappointing at this price. What it lacks in video display, it more than makes up for in design – with 4 LED lights this all black design is as mean as they come so if your child wants to look super cool flying their drone in the summer sun then this could be the one to go for.

A very good model for a child and the learning possibilities make this a pretty solid second in our list.

Without a doubt the most fun we had during this testing for kids drones was with the Black Widow – it also had the coolest name and one of the most impressive designs of all the drones we tested. As soon as you take the X902 out of the box there is something about it that strikes you as being somewhat different – then it clicks, the propellers and motors point downwards rather than upwards – and it looks like quite a mean little beast.

Taking the Black Widow to the skies and it doesn’t disappoint and is suitable for all levels of drone flying expertise. Suitable for indoor and outdoor use the Black Widow is quite a versatile little unit. What it has going for it in it’s design doesn’t mean that it lacks in it’s features, although the noticeable feature missing is of course the camera – but then you are getting probably the best drone for under £15 here.

The Black Widow has two motor speed settings (high and low) which is perfect for helping little ones learn to fly before increasing the speed when they get a little more confident. The controls are pretty standard but the size of the this mini drone does make it a little more difficult to control purely – the built in stable flight technology does compensate somewhat for this and the 6 axis stabilisations system does make for a smoother flight and makes you look a better pilot than you probably are.

You won’t get much bang for your buck in terms of battery life with around 6 minutes worth of flight time per charge but with a charging time of around 35 minutes from empty to full it is perfect for practising in the house.

You will get plenty of enjoyment from flying outdoors too with the expected 3D flips and rolls at the touch of a button as well as around a 30 metre range for control.

Don’t let the diminutive size put you off the Black Widow – there is a serious amount of fun to be had for £15 here and you will be hard pressed to break this drone easily.

10 – LIDI RC Wifi 6 Axis Quadcopter – Model L7HW

LiDi RC is one of the lesser known brands in the realm of UAV’s but we were pretty impressed with the L7HW that we tested and the feedback from our 14 year old was again positive with this model. The LiDi RC drone comes in a variety of colour options so you pretty much choose one to match the style of your child.

Coming in at a very reasonable £35.99 (check latest price here) the L7HW is packed full of features that you would expect to pay little more for. The 6 axis quadcopter is able to do 360 degree flips and also features a handy auto-fly mode.

Where this model really excels is with the hand LiDi RC app that you can download straight to your smartphone allowing you to use it as display for what you are filming. It also features a neat looking LED light that flashes – something that the kids will enjoy.

This model looks a little more grown up than some of the other child friendly drones and whilst we probably wouldn’t let most under 8’s loose with it, it should be a suitable drone for a child aged 10 and upwards.

Battery wise the L7HW lasted around 10 minutes whilst filming and the quality of footage and stills were pretty impressive for such budget model.

11 – Lamaston X5C-1 Review

Lamaston have a pretty good reputation amongst budget drone owners and the Lamaston X5C-1 is no exception to this. At the time of writing we could pick one up on Amazon for a poultry £39.99 with 56% off the usual RRP of £89.99 – and that included one day delivery with Prime. Whilst the X5C-1 is not the sexiest of drones it will certainly satisfy a youngsters interest in drones as a first time user.

The quadcopter kit and onboard 2 mega pixel camera provides enough tech to spur a child’s imagination without a cost that will give the parent palpitations every time they fly it within 30 yards of a tree.

With 360 degrees of rotation and the ability to do full flips there is plenty to keep the kids entertained and the on-board camera will get plenty of use with the 4GB memory card that comes included in the price.

One feature that we really liked with the X5C-1 was the one press return to home feature that is really handy should your child get in a pickle – not bad little feature for the price.

An important thing to note is that this is not a wi-fi model so you will have to manually transfer your photos and videos from the drone, but most kids won’t mind this and it is not a bug price to pay when you consider the cost of the drone itself.

We tested this with a 14 year old lad and the only thing he didn’t like was when the batteries died and we had to return for recharging. Yes, this model has some serious limitations but the price is the big pull here – for any adult beginner or child looking to learn the basics of flying a drone then this is a serious contender.

FAQ’s

The number one question that we hear a lot is

How old do you have to be to fly a drone?

Well the answer in the UK is that there is no minimum age to be able to fly a drone (at the time of writing – October 2018) if it is for recreational use. There is a bit of a question mark over insurance and liability for damage caused by a minor though as usually children will not be able to obtain insurance for flying a drone – this means that if they cause an accident or they cause damage to the drone any adult insurance that is covering the craft might become invalidated.

There is a workaround to this though by looking in to enrolling your child as a member of the British Model Flying Association where they will find insurance covers aspects of their drone piloting.

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